Go-ahead to new Fern­dale phar­macy and GP’s surgery

WEX­FORD County Coun­cil has granted plan­ning per­mis­sion for the build­ing of a new doc­tor’s surgery and phar­macy in an ex­ist­ing re­tail/neigh­bour­hood cen­tre at Fern­dale Park hous­ing es­tate in Cool­cotts.

Kil­lyon In­vest­ments Ltd, owned by Wex­ford phar­ma­cist Derek Fe­hily and his wife Kes­ree, have been given the goa­head to de­velop a two-storey mod­ern build­ing com­pris­ing a phar­macy on the ground floor and a GP’s surgery with five con­sul­ta­tion rooms on the first floor, ad­ja­cent to the lo­cal su­per­mar­ket. The area is zoned for Neigh­bour­hood Cen­tre/Mixed use.

Ex­ec­u­tive plan­ner Ni­amh Len­non noted that the site de­sign has a short­fall of 13 car park­ing spa­ces but this is com­pen­sated for by al­ter­na­tive park­ing at the re­tail cen­tre owned by An­thony Doyle.

‘In view of the im­prove­ments that the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment will bring from a vis­ual amenity but also com­mu­nity fa­cil­ity point of view, I con­sider it ap­pro­pri­ate to al­low the short­fall of park­ing to be ac­com­mo­dated within the wider com­mu­nity/neigh­bour­hood cen­tre site,’ she said.

‘The pro­posed med­i­cal cen­tre and phar­macy will be a wel­come ad­di­tion to the ex­ist­ing neigh­bour­hood cen­tre. The mod­ern de­sign will pro­vide a wel­come im­prove­ment to the streetscape of the neigh­bour­hood cen­tre,’ she added.

The owner Mr. Doyle has stated that he has no ob­jec­tion to the ex­ist­ing park­ing fa­cil­i­ties be­ing used by cus­tomers of the phar­macy and surgery.

A con­di­tion of plan­ning is that win­dow glaz­ing on the south­west­ern up­per floor should be ob­scured to en­sure there is no risk of over­look­ing into the ad­join­ing sin­gle storey res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties.